In BoC there are 3 types of units, that can be: Soldiers, Workers, or a mix between it, while soldiers only fight in combat, workers can do more things like hunt, build, harvest, or repair, mixed units like Hunters can hunt and combat and making them very helpful in the early and mid-game.

Aside from units types, there are also subclasses, reflecting the variety of different progression paths over history, each unit can allow up to 2 subclasses.

The subclass bring more variety introducing a special behavior for each kind of unit, for example, nomads hunters are spearmen and tribal.

Currently planned subclasses list:
• Tribal: 20% to reload movement points after the first movement of each turn.
  
• Spearmen: +25% defese bonus when unit is on defensive position.
  
• chivalry: +50% attack bonus versus melee units.
  
• Tank: 35% to block 25% of total upcoming damage.
  
• Guerrilla: Just on hist first movement, this unit have +350% movement point bonus (just occurs one time), this unit avoids his destruction and restores 40% of the total unit (just occurs one time).
  
• Legion: 40% to avoid demoralizing effects.
  
• Juggernauts: 60% to desmoralizing near units.

All of those subclasses can be improved with upgrades when players progress through new trait nodes, for example, Tank is designed to scale up to 65% to block 50% damage.

Each unit has its stats and those are: damage, defense, resistance, moral and movement points. Also, each unit have combat experience (recruit range for fresh recruits for example), and also combat formation, that can be: Disorderly or organized

• Disorderly formation: just can stack up to 3 units on a tile (can be improved up to 4 units on a tile).
  
• Organized formation: Can stack up to 5 units on a tile (can be improved up to 7 units on a tile).

N.B.: you can't stack or mix units with different combat formations.Usually, disorderly formations would be present in early and midgame, while organized formations require unlocking a lot of nodes from the progression system to allow it to be enabled.


Units on BoC can have weapons and armor, all units having their own default set. For example, Mesopotamian spearmen .. will have .. spear as a weapon (what a surprise xD), weapons and armors from units bring additional behavior to the unit, for example, the long spear will add +50 attack bonus versus mounted units, or light leather armor will add 10% to avoid an incoming attack (means that unit have more agility, others like heavy armors allow a percentage of damage reduction).

All of these bonuses are calculated unit-by-unit in combat. For example, if one unit has 25 soldiers, these modifiers will be calculated for each of them while in combat.

Allowed configuration:

• Left hand
  
• Right hand
  
• Set

For EA release, it will be on the game because all units will have their default sets, but at the medium range, we want to introduce armories where the player can set his own equipment for each unit.


Feel an army not just board pieces! Units in BoC can be stacked on a tile with others, you can mix different types of units to reach better combat on face different enemies, the unique limitation here is that you cant mix disorderly formation units with organized formation units, also, stacking your units will increase their possibilities to survive from incoming attacks, in BoC when combat is calculated there is an attribute called 'numerical superiority', that basically gives a resistance bonus when the unit has 50% more soldiers than his enemy.

Units have a reinforcement area, where if they attack or are being attacked, all friendly units inside the reinforcement area will join to fight (usually 1x1 area but it can be larger)


Work in progress, will not be on EA release.

The main feature in BoC is clear, you have a vast world, really a vast world! So, you will need a lot of units to conquer and defend your empire.. your kingdom... your little kingdom?.. maybe just your single city-state?.. okay probably just your little tribe? (being honest, that road will be really hard, don't expect to develop an empire without 1000h of previous experience, no, is not a joke).

In BoC you have population stats, so attending to demographics will be crucial to develop your army and civilization, because it will not be as easy as ordering a new swordsman unit in one of your cities and waiting for a few turns to have it, so on BoC you have the manpower stat that is a reference about how many people disposition you have to recruit new units, also your demographics are based on your food disponibility index and urbanization index (simplifying a bit: how much more food and urbanization districts do you will bring, more people do you will have).

So, as your farms are based on your local's climate attributes, your army could be easily decimated by famines based on how fast climate change is in your local region* for example, take care about that when you will settle! this is just a good reference about how demographics and climate simulation are on all sides of BoC.


*Some regions would be more exposed than others to fast climate transitions, just consider that 6000 years ago Mesopotamia region was most humid than today, but this still requires balanced after EA release and hear tons of feedback about.

But if we consider manpower stat, maybe it is still not enough, because unlike modern times all people (even child's) was supposed to be occupied on any task right? well, that is the reason behind manpower stat is a little deeper than a just measure of "people free to call to arms"

In ancient times all people (even children) are occupied doing his task to survive one day more, so this stat means the people that you could recruit, BUT however much manpower you take away from the workforce and give to the army, less production do you will have, as a percentage and this percentage is global about your cities, so in summary: you could take 100% of available manpower but your production will low to 0! (work that you need to end building, units .. etc)


If you like the following news and discuss with developers to bring your feedback and ideas, follow us in our official community on Reddit!

In BOC, progression system is based on civilization & cultures traits trees, you will progress from first prehistoric nomads tribes up to great ancient empires through civilizations and cultures time-line, but that progression is not linear, BOC takes to the table a non-linear progression system.

Unlike other strategy games where player chooses a particular faction, what we have is a sandbox-like combination of progression and cultures. At the beginning of the game, you will only have under your command a tiny nomadic tribe. This tribe are not Romans, nor Carthaginians, nor Persians nor Macedonians ... but depending on how you run them over the millennia, they may be one thing or another!

In BOC, as happened in the real world, it is the geography and the decisions that you make as a player what, with the passage of time, is shaping the culture and identity of your people.

See timeline at full screen 2160p
Check civilizations list -work in progress-

We are working to offert more than 80 ancient Civilizations and cultures for the progression system at 1.0 release (including, planned oriental, and american cultures). At the first content for EA launch you can expect mesopotamian, early celtics and egypt cultures.


You can progress will freedom in the way that you choose through civilizations and culture traits, but there are some rules, each tree could have aclimatation requeriments or reestrictions, here you can see a conceptual distribution about that:

So, there are no reestriction about how direction that you can take, for example, you can take some traits nodes from Elamintes and after that maybe you will like to go to Egypt old-kingdom tree, as long as you accomplished the requirements of each tree -if exist-, in general terms always you can progress through trees that are reasonably closely, your faction can change passively his acclimatation based on where is placed over the world map, happens more faster at early game meanwhile you are nomad but still can change at midle or late game if you want to do.

To unlock nodes from trait trees you need expend progression points, there are 3 different types of progression points: War, Growth and Myth points. -Originally was 9 types but along with the other mechanics of the game had thought that was an excess of design- are your decisions that you take, and at the end your way to play that give you progressions points, each node of each branch of each trait tree have is own progression points requeriments, is the branch specialization that defines how many and the combination of progression points that you will need.

To unlock new nodes from a particular tier requires have unlocked the same nodes than that tier row less one (simple formula: tier row -1) , that is like if you want to unlock nodes from tier 2 you need at least to have one node, or if you want to unlock any node from tier 5 you need to have at least 4 nodes of that branch.

Specialization branch agroup nodes with same background or purposes and are directly related with a famous definition of that historic civilization or culture.

Based on historic background each trait tree can allow one or more branchs, for example, above you are seeing Early indoeuropeans trait tree that is a single branch tree, now you can see Egypt pre-dynastic as a example of tree with multiple branchs:

Currently some civilization and cultures like Rome Republic have up to 5 branchs specializations, each branch can contain up to 5 tiers so that means up to 15 nodes per each branch, also each tree include tier bonuses if you unlock enough nodes like from picture of early indoeuropeans desing, that in this case unlocks an architectonic collection.

There are a limit about how many trait nodes player can unlock (arround 50), but still player can left previous trait nodes to allow new space for new ones, unlearn previous nodes also requires expend progression points multiply by 10.

In some special cases, (like egypt) you will require to complete some tier bonuses from previous egypts cultures, like it would be a tree chain, Rome and Babylons also have this requieriments.

Aside civilization and cultures timeline, there are knowledge system like as a tech tree that also requires the player to use progression points, and currently still is a open mechanic development and It will expain in next steam news!

-we are doing our best to reach as soon as posible the content quality to release EA-